Polly Oliver's Problem

For the rest, a firm, round figure, no angles, everything, including elbows, in curves; blooming cheeks and smooth-skinned, taper-fingered hands tanned a very honest brown,–the hands of a person who loves beauty.

Polly Oliver's love of beautiful things was a passion, and one that had little gratification; but luckily, though good music, pictures, china, furniture, and "purple and fine linen" were all conspicuous by their absence, she could feast without money and without price on the changeful loveliness of the Santa Ynez mountains, the sapphire tints of the placid Pacific, and the gorgeous splendor of the Californian wild-flowers, so that her sense of beauty never starved.

Her hand was visible in the modest sitting-room where she now sat with her mother; for it was pretty and homelike, although its simple decorations and furnishings had been brought together little by little during a period of two years; so that the first installments were all worn out, Polly was wont to remark plaintively, before the last additions made their appearance.

The straw matting had Japanese figures on it, while a number of rugs covered the worn places, and gave it an opulent look. The table-covers, curtains, and portières were of blue jean worked in outline embroidery, and Mrs. Oliver's couch had as many pillows as that of an oriental princess; for Polly's summers were spent camping in a cañon, and she embroidered sofa-cushions and draperies with frenzy during these weeks of out-of-door life.

Upon the cottage piano was a blue Canton ginger-jar filled with branches of feathery bamboo that spread its lace-like foliage far and wide over the ceiling and walls, quite covering the large spot where the roof had leaked. Various stalks of tropical-looking palms, distributed artistically about, concealed the gaping wounds in the walls, inflicted by the Benton children, who had once occupied this same apartment. Mexican water-jars, bearing peacock feathers, screened Mr. Benton's two favorite places for scratching matches. The lounge was the sort of lounge that looks well only between two windows, but Polly was obliged to place it across the corner where she really needed the table, because in that position it shielded from the public view the enormous black spots on the wall where Reginald Benton had flung the ink-bottle at his angel sister Pansy Belle. Then there was an umbrella-lamp bestowed by a boarder whom Mrs. Oliver had nursed through typhoid fever; a banjo; plenty of books and magazines; and an open fireplace, with a great pitcher of yellow wild-flowers standing between the old-fashioned brass andirons.

Little Miss Oliver's attitude on the question of the boarders must stand quite without justification.

"It is a part of Polly," sighed her mother, "and must be borne with Christian fortitude."

Colonel Oliver had never fully recovered from a wound received in the last battle of the civil war, and when he was laid to rest in a quiet New England churchyard, so much of Mrs. Oliver's heart was buried with him that it was difficult to take up the burden of life with any sort of courage. At last her delicate health prompted her to take the baby daughter, born after her husband's death, and go to southern California, where she invested her small property in a house in Santa Barbara. She could not add to her income by any occupation that kept her away from the baby; so the boarders followed as a matter of course (a house being suitable neither for food nor clothing), and a constantly changing family of pleasant people helped her to make both ends meet, and to educate the little daughter as she grew from babyhood into childhood.

Now, as Polly had grown up among the boarders, most of whom petted her, no one can account for her slightly ungrateful reception of their good-will; but it is certain that the first time she was old enough to be trusted at the table, she grew very red in the face, slipped down from her high chair, and took her bowl of bread and milk on to the porch. She was followed and gently reasoned with, but her only explanation was that she did n't "yike to eat wiv so many peoples." Persuasion bore no fruit, and for a long time Miss Polly ate in solitary grandeur. Indeed, the feeling increased rather than diminished, until the child grew old enough to realize her mother's burden, when with passionate and protecting love she put her strong young shoulders under the load and lifted her share, never so very prettily or gracefully,–it is no use trying to paint a halo round Polly's head,–but with a proud courage and a sort of desperate resolve to be as good as she could, which was not very good, she would have told you.

She would come back from the beautiful home of her friend, Bell Winship, and look about on her own surroundings, never with scorn, or sense of bitterness,–she was too sensible and sweet-natured for that,–but with an inward rebellion against the existing state of things, and a secret determination to create a better one, if God would only give her power and opportunity. But this pent-up feeling only showed itself to her mother in bursts of impulsive nonsense, at which Mrs. Oliver first laughed and then sighed.

"Oh, for a little, little breakfast-table!" Polly would say, as she flung herself on her mother's couch, and punched the pillows desperately. "Oh, for a father to say 'Steak, Polly dear?' instead of my asking, 'Steakorchop?' over and over every morning! Oh, for a lovely, grown-up, black-haired sister, who would have hundreds of lovers, and let me stay in the room when they called! Oh, for a tiny baby brother, fat and dimpled, who would crow, and spill milk on the tablecloth, and let me sit on the floor and pick up the things he threw down! But instead of that, a new, big, strange family, different people every six months, people who don't like each other, and have to be seated at opposite ends of the table; ladies whose lips tremble with disappointment if they don't get the second joint of the chicken, and gentlemen who are sulky if any one else gets the liver. Oh, mamma, I am sixteen now, and it will soon be time for me to begin taking care of you; but I warn you, I shall never do it by means of the boarders!"

"Are you so weak and proud, little daughter, as to be ashamed because I have taken care of you these sixteen years 'by means of the boarders,' as you say?"

"No, no, mamma! Don't think so badly of me as that. That feeling was outgrown long ago. Do I not know that it is just as fine and honorable as anything else in the world, and do I not love and honor you with all my heart because you do it in so sweet and dignified a way that everybody respects you for it? But it is n't my vocation. I would like to do something different, something wider, something lovelier, if I knew how, and were ever good enough!"

"It is easy to 'dream noble things,' dear, but hard to do them 'all day long.' My own feeling is, if one reaches the results one is struggling for, and does one's work as well as it lies in one to do it, that keeping boarders is as good service as any other bit of the world's work. One is not always permitted to choose the beautiful or glorious task. Sometimes all one can do is to make the humble action fine by doing it 'as it is done in heaven.' Remember, 'they also serve who only stand and wait.'"

"Yes, mamma," said Polly meekly; "but," stretching out her young arms hopefully and longingly, "it must be that they also serve who stand and dare, and I 'm going to try that first,–then I 'll wait, if God wants me to."

"What if God wants you to wait first, little daughter?"

Polly hid her face in the sofa-cushions and did not answer.

CHAPTER II.

FORECASTING THE FUTURE

Two of Mrs. Oliver's sitting-room windows looked out on the fig-trees, and the third on a cosy piazza corner framed in passion-vines, where at the present moment stood a round table holding a crystal bowl of Gold of Ophir roses, a brown leather portfolio, and a dish of apricots. Against the table leaned an old Spanish guitar with a yellow ribbon round its neck, and across the corner hung a gorgeous hammock of Persian colored threads, with two or three pillows of canary-colored China silk in one end. A bamboo lounging-chair and a Shaker rocker completed the picture; and the passer-by could generally see Miss Anita Ferguson reclining in the one, and a young (but not Wise) man from the East in the other. It was not always the same young man any more than the decorations were always of the same color.

"That's another of my troubles," said Polly to her friend Margery Noble, pulling up the window-shade one afternoon and pointing to the now empty "cosy corner." "I don't mind Miss Ferguson's sitting there, though it used always to be screened off for my doll-house, and I love it dearly; but she pays to sit there, and she ought to do it; besides, she looks prettier there than any one else. Isn't it lovely? The other day she had pink oleanders in the bowl, the cushions turned the pink side up,–you see they are canary and rose-color,–a pink muslin dress, and the guitar trimmed with a fringe of narrow pink ribbons. She was a dream, Margery! But she does n't sit there with her young men when I am at school, nor when I am helping Ah Foy in the dining-room, nor, of course, when we are at table. She sits there from four to six in the afternoon and in the evening, the only times I have with mamma in this room. We are obliged to keep the window closed, lest we should overhear the conversation. That is tiresome enough in warm weather. You see the other windows are shaded by the fig-trees, so here we sit, in Egyptian darkness, mamma and I, during most of the pleasant afternoons. And if anything ever came of it, we would n't mind, but nothing ever does. There have been so many young men,–I could n't begin to count them, but they have worn out the seats of four chairs,–and why does n't one of them take her away? Then we could have a nice, plain young lady who would sit quietly on the front steps with the old people, and who would n't want me to carry messages for her three times a day."

At the present moment, however, Miss Anita Ferguson, clad in a black habit, with a white rose in her buttonhole, and a neat black derby with a scarf of white crêpe de chine wound about it, had gone on the mesa for a horseback ride, so Polly and Margery had borrowed the cosy corner for a chat.

Margery was crocheting a baby's afghan, and Polly was almost obscured by a rumpled, yellow dress which lay in her lap.

"You observe my favorite yellow gown?" she asked.

"Yes, what have you done to it?"

"Gin Sing picked blackberries in the colander. I, supposing the said colander to be a pan with the usual bottom, took it in my lap and held it for an hour while I sorted the berries. Result: a hideous stain a foot and a half in diameter, to say nothing of the circumference. Mr. Greenwood suggested oxalic acid. I applied it, and removed both the stain and the dress in the following complete manner;" and Polly put her brilliant head through an immense circular hole in the front breadth of the skirt.

"It 's hopeless, is n't it? for of course a patch won't look well," said Margery.

"Hopeless? Not a bit. You see this pretty yellow and white striped lawn? I have made a long, narrow apron of it, and ruffled it all round. I pin it to my waist thus, and the hole is covered. But it looks like an apron, and how do I contrive to throw the public off the scent? I add a yoke and sash of the striped lawn, and people see simply a combination-dress. I do the designing, and my beloved little mother there will do the sewing; forgetting her precious Polly's carelessness in making the hole, and remembering only her cleverness in covering it."

"Capital!" said Margery; "it will be prettier than ever. Oh dear! that dress was new when we had our last lovely summer in the cañon. Shall we ever go again, all together, I wonder? Just think how we are all scattered,–the Winships traveling in Europe (I 'll read you Bell's last letter by and by); Geoffrey Strong studying at Leipsic; Jack Howard at Harvard, with Elsie and her mother watching over him in Cambridge; Philip and I on the ranch as usual, and you here. We are so divided that it does n't seem possible that we can ever have a complete reunion, does it?"

"No," said Polly, looking dreamily at the humming-birds hovering over the honeysuckle; "and if we should, everything would be different. Bless dear old Bell's heart! What a lovely summer she must be having! I wonder what she will do."

"Do?" echoed Margery.

"Yes; it always seemed to me that Bell Winship would do something in the world; that she would never go along placidly like other girls, she has so many talents."

"Yes; but so long as they have plenty of money, Dr. and Mrs. Winship would probably never encourage her in doing anything."

"It would be all the better if she could do something because she loved it, and with no thought of earning a living by it. Is n't it odd that I who most need the talents should have fewer than any one of our dear little group? Bell can write, sing, dance, or do anything else, in fact; Elsie can play like an angel; you can draw; but it seems to me I can do nothing well enough to earn money by it; and that is precisely what I must do."

"You 've never had any special instruction, Polly dear, else you could sing as well as Bell, or play as well as Elsie."

"Well, I must soon decide. Mamma says next summer, when I am seventeen, she will try to spend a year in San Francisco and let me study regularly for some profession. The question is, what?–or whether to do something without study. I read in a magazine the other day that there are now three hundred or three thousand, I can't remember which, vocations open to women. If it were even three hundred I could certainly choose one to my liking, and there would be two hundred and ninety-nine left over for the other girls. Mrs. Weeks is trying to raise silkworms. That would be rather nice, because the worms would be silent partners in the business and do most of the work."

"But you want something without any risks, you know," said Margery sagely. "You would have to buy ground for the silkworms, and set out the mulberries, and then a swarm of horrid insects might happen along and devour the plants before the worms began spinning."

"'Competition is the life of trade,'" said Polly. "No, that is n't what I mean–'Nothing venture, nothing have,' that's it. Then how would hens do? Ever so many women raise hens."

"Hens have diseases, and they never lay very well when you have to sell the eggs. By the way, Clarence Jones, who sings in the choir,–you know, the man with the pink cheeks and corn-silk hair,–advertises in the 'Daily Press' for a 'live partner.' Now, there 's a chance on an established hen-ranch, if he does n't demand capital or experience."

"It's a better chance for Miss Ferguson. But she does n't like Mr. Jones, because when he comes to call, his coat-pockets are always bulging with brown paper packages of a hen-food that he has just invented. The other day, when he came to see her, she was out, and he handed me his card. It had a picture and advertisement of 'The Royal Dish-faced Berkshire Pig' on it; and I 'm sure, by her expression when she saw it, that she will never be his 'live partner.' No, I don't think I 'll have an out-of-door occupation, it's so trying to the complexion. Now, how about millinery? I could be an apprentice, and gradually rise until I imported everything direct from Paris."

"But, Polly," objected Margery, "you know you never could tie a bow, or even put a ribbon on your sailor hat."

"But I could learn. Do you suppose all the milliners were called to their work by a consciousness of genius? Perish the thought! If that were true, there wouldn't be so many hideous hats in the shop windows. However, I don't pine for millinery; it's always a struggle for me to wear a hat myself."

"You 've done beautifully the last year or two, dear, and you 've reaped the reward of virtue, for you 've scarcely a freckle left."

"Oh, that isn't hats," rejoined Polly, "that's the law of compensation. When I was younger, and did n't take the boarders so much to heart, I had freckles given to me for a cross; but the moment I grew old enough to see the boarders in their true light and note their effect on mamma, the freckles disappeared. Now, here 's an idea. I might make a complexion lotion for a living. Let me see what I 've been advised by elderly ladies to use in past years: ammonia, lemon-juice, cucumbers, morning dew, milk, pork rinds, kerosene, and a few other household remedies. Of course I 'm not sure which did the work, but why could n't I mix them all in equal parts,–if they would mix, you know, and let those stay out that would n't,–and call it the 'Olivera Complexion Lotion'? The trade-mark might be a cucumber, a lemon, and a morning dew-drop, rampant, and a frightened little brown spot couchant. Then on the neat label pasted on the bottles above the trade-mark there might be a picture of a spotted girl,–that's Miss Oliver before using her lotion,–and a copy of my last photograph,–that's Miss Oliver radiant in beauty after using her lotion."

Margery laughed, as she generally did at Polly's nonsense.

"That sounds very attractive, but if you are anxious for an elegant and dignified occupation which shall restore your mother to her ancestral position, it certainly has its defects."

"I know everything has its defects, everything except one, and I won't believe that has a single weak point."

"Oh, Polly, you deceiver! You have a secret leaning toward some particular thing, after all!"

"Yes; though I have n't talked it over fully yet, even with mamma, lest she should think it one of my wild schemes; but, Margery, I want with all my heart to be a kindergartner like Miss Mary Denison. There would be no sting to me in earning my living, if only I could do it by working among poor, ragged, little children, as she does. I run in and stay half an hour with her whenever I can, and help the babies with their sewing or weaving, and I always study and work better myself afterward,–I don't know whether it's the children, or Miss Denison, or the place, or all three. And the other day, when I was excused from my examinations, I stayed the whole morning in the kindergarten. When it was time for the games, and they were all on the circle, they began with a quiet play they call 'Silent Greeting,' and oh, Margery, they chose me to come in, of their own accord! When I walked into the circle to greet that smallest Walker baby my heart beat like a trip-hammer, I was so afraid I should do something wrong, and they would never ask me in again. Then we played 'The Hen and Chickens,' and afterward something about the birds in the greenwood; and one of the make-believe birds flew to me (I was a tree, you know, a whispering elm-tree), and built its nest in my branches, and then I smoothed its feathers and sang to it as the others had done, and it was like heaven! After the play was over, we modeled clay birds; and just as we were making the tables tidy, Professor Hohlweg came in and asked Miss Denison to come into the large hall to play for the marching, as the music-teacher was absent. Then what did Miss Denison do but turn to me and say, 'Miss Oliver, you get on so nicely with the children, would you mind telling them some little story for me? I shall be gone only ten or fifteen minutes.' Oh, Margery, it was awful! I was more frightened than when I was asked to come into the circle; but the children clapped their hands and cried, 'Yes, yes, tell us a story!' I could only think of 'The Hen that Hatched Ducks,' but I sat down and began, and, as I talked, I took my clay bird and molded it into a hen, so that they would look at me whether they listened or not. Of course, one of the big seven-year-old boys began to whisper and be restless, but I handed him a large lump of clay and asked him to make a nest and some eggs for my hen, and that soon absorbed his attention. They listened so nicely,–you can hardly believe how nicely they listened! When I finished I looked at the clock. It had been nine minutes, and I could n't think what to do the other dreadful minutes till Miss Denison should come back. At last my eye fell on the blackboard, and that gave me an idea. I drew a hen's beak and then a duck's, a hen's foot and then a duck's, to show them the difference. Just then Miss Denison came in softly, and I confess I was bursting with pride and delight. There was the blackboard with the sketches, not very good ones, it is true, the clay hen and nest and eggs, and all the children sitting quietly in their wee red chairs. And Miss Denison said, 'How charming of you to carry out the idea of the morning so nicely! My dear little girl, you were made for this sort of thing, did you know it?'"

"Well, I should n't think you had patience enough for any sort of teaching," said Margery candidly.

"Neither did I suppose so myself, and I have n't any patience to spare, that is, for boarders, or dishes, or beds; but I love children so dearly that they never try my patience as other things do."

"You have had the play side of the kindergarten, Polly, while Miss Denison had the care. There must be a work-a-day side to it; I'm sure Miss Denison very often looks tired to death."

"Of course!" cried Polly. "I know it 's hard work; but who cares whether a thing is hard or not, if one loves it? I don't mind work; I only mind working at something I dislike and can never learn to like. Why, Margery, at the Sunday-school picnics you go off in the broiling sun and sit on a camp-chair and sketch, while I play Fox and Geese with the children, and each of us pities the other and thinks she must be dying with heat. It 's just the difference between us! You carry your easel and stool and paint-boxes and umbrella up the steepest hill, and never mind if your back aches; I bend over Miss Denison's children with their drawing or building, and never think of my back-ache, do you see?"

"Yes; but I always keep up my spirits by thinking that though I may be tired and discouraged, it is worth while because it is Art I am working at; and for the sake of being an artist I ought to be willing to endure anything. You would n't have that feeling to inspire and help you."

"I should like to know why I would n't," exclaimed Polly, with flashing eyes. "I should like to know why teaching may not be an art. I confess I don't know exactly what an artist is, or rather what the dictionary definition of art is; but sit down in Miss Burke's room at the college; you can't stay there half an hour without thinking that, rather than have her teach you anything, you would be an ignorant little cannibal on a desert island! She does n't know how, and there is nothing beautiful about it. But look at Miss Denison! When she comes into her kindergarten it is like the sunrise, and she makes everything blossom that she touches. It is all so simple and sweet that it seems as if anybody could do it; but when you try it you find that it is quite different. Whether she plays or sings, or talks or works with the children, it is perfect. 'It all seems so easy when you do it,' I said to her yesterday, and she pointed to the quotation for the day in her calendar. It was a sentence from George MacDonald: 'Ease is the lovely result of forgotten toil.' Now it may be that Miss Mary Denison is only an angel; but I think that she 's an artist."

"On second thoughts, perhaps you are right in your meaning of the word, though it does n't follow that all teachers are artists."

"No; nor that all the painters are," retorted Polly. "Think of that poor Miss Thomas in your outdoor class. Last week, when you were sketching the cow in front of the old barn, I sat behind her for half an hour. Her barn grew softer and softer and her cow harder and harder, till when she finished, the barn looked as if it were molded in jelly and the cow as if it were carved in red sandstone."

"She ought not to be allowed to paint," said Margery decisively.

"Of course she ought n't! That's just what I say; and I ought not to be allowed to keep boarders, and I won't!"

"I must say you have wonderful courage, Polly. It seems so natural and easy for you to strike out for yourself in a new line that it must be you feel a sense of power, and that you will be successful."

Polly's manner changed abruptly as she glanced in at her mother's empty chair before she replied.

"Courage! Sometimes I think I have n't a morsel. I am a gilded sham. My knees tremble whenever I think of my future 'career,' as I call it. Mamma thinks me filled with a burning desire for a wider sphere of action, and so I am, but chiefly for her sake. Courage! There 's nothing like having a blessed, tired little mother to take care of,–a mother whom you want to snatch from the jaws of a horrible fate. That 's a trifle strong, but it's dramatic! You see, Margery, a woman like my mother is not going to remain forever in her present rank in her profession,–she is too superior; she is bound to rise. Now, what would become of her if she rose? Why, first, she would keep a country hotel, and sit on the front piazza in a red rocker, and chat with the commercial travelers; and then she would become the head of a summer resort, with a billiard-room and a bowling-alley. I must be self-supporting, and 'I will never desert Mr. Micawber,' so I should make beds and dust in Hotel Number One, and in Hotel Number Two entertain the guests with my music and my 'sprightly manners,'–that's what Mr. Greenwood calls them, and the only reason I am sorry we live in a republic is that I can't have him guillotined for doing it, but must swallow my wrath because he pays twenty dollars a week and seldom dines at home. Finally, in Hotel Number Three I should probably marry the ninepin-man or the head clerk, so as to consolidate the management and save salaries, and there would end the annals of the Olivers! No, Margery!" cried Polly, waving the scissors in the air, "everybody is down on the beach, and I can make the welkin ring if I like, so hear me: The boarders must go! How, when, and where they shall go are three problems I have n't yet solved; and what I shall find to take the place of them when they do go is a fourth problem, and the knottiest one of all!"